How to find the Truth for Yourself

1) Recognize your ego.

The ego "is" a lot of things, but basically, it is your sense of "you." Anything that can fill in the blank of this sentence: "I am ____." More importantly to finding the truth, it is the part of the ego which fills in this blank: "I believe ____." So prettymuch everything that you describe yourself with. But it is the "I believe" part that is most important in finding the truth. Now, ego isn't neccessarily a bad thing. Ego gives people a sense of purpose, it makes the economy keep going, it drives us to fulfill our needs (to get food, shelter, etc), and basically it keeps us alive. But here is the thing. Water is good for you. You are supposed to drink water. You need water to survive. But if you chug several gallons of water all at once, you get water intoxication and die (water intoxication is similar to alchohol intoxication). Ego is the same way. You need your ego to live, but too much of it will screw up your perception and thinking abilities, andlead to an imbalance which will eventually create problems. Right now, in our generation, this negative effect is especially happening. We are constantly being faced with people who havevery strong egos. I think we can all agree that those with opinions, usually won't accept other opinions. It doesn't matter how much "proof" or disproof you give them, they will twist it so that it is meaningless. Most of the time, these people base their ideas off of various sources which they aren’t really sure are true, in fact, most of the time they aren’t really sure where the ideaoriginally came from at all (think of the most basic things you know about society, history, and science and try to figure outwhere all the ideas came from)

Problems in Overcoming Ego

Some groups of people do try to get past this sense of an ego. One community which tries to do this is the scientific community. The thing that people attribute to science the most is probably this: the rejection of opinion and people's own desires, in exchange for cold,hard fact. The only thing is, in doing this, they actually have made an ego of their own in a very oxymoronic way. They have used not having opinions and egotistical logic to create their own ego. One thing that comes up most of all, and pretty much what I'm talkingabout, is the atheist vs. theist argument that comes up a lot, especially with things like the Big Bang Theory and evolution. And now, because of their egos, people have done something uneccessary and sad. They have messed up a good thing. Something that mightlead to us finding out the actual truth. And they have done by making people think that science is anti-religious. They have attacked the one thing that people desperately hold on to more than anything in a world of uncertainty- their souls. And their ego. And that is where scientists have gone wrong. You aren't going to "prove" anything to someone by attacking someones ego, anymorethan someone who attacks your ego is going to prove anything to you. No one should have connected religion to science. Science isn't religion. It shouldn't be. Whether or not God is real has nothing to do with science at all. I will go in depth about it later, but for now, if you actually research it, science does not disprove the Bible. Anyone who says that it does, is either a scientist that doesn't know the Bible, or a Christian who doesn't know anything about science. Or some random person who doesn't even try to find out about either. And the last type of person, who doesn't know anything about either, is talking for a reason. That reason is the ego. They HAVE to know something, they HAVE to decide on a belief because of their ego, regardless of whether they actually know the truth or not. So neither side of the argument is asking, "What is the Truth?" They are asking, "What do I believe?" It becomes all about them, MYbeliefs, MY God, MY lack of one. Its all about their own ego, not the actual Truth. Theists say, "But mine IS the truth." Atheists say, "mineis the truth." Well we can't all be right, can we? And as long as we stand around arguing, we won't have time to find out who is. By the time we finish arguing, we will be dead, won't we? Let's not forget that scientists used to think that the earth was flat, that the earth was made of only four elements, that draining people's blood was supposed to heal them. Let's also not forget that there were Greek philosophers who described atoms, and whoinsisted that the world was round, but they were ignored because they had no proof at the time and people considered it just a stupid myth. And although we think that we are smart, so did all the people before us. I wonder what people a thousand years from now willbe saying about our intelligence. I'm not saying that either view is wrong, I'm simply saying that you can't blame anyone for believing something just because they don'thave enough proof to please you. No proof doesn't mean "proof that its false". It just means uncertainty. Theres nothing wrong with opinions, but there is something wrong with letting opinions waste away your life. So let's not stand around and argue about a problem which we can't find an answer to. (By the way, I'm not saying that ALL scientists or atheists are this way, or that ALL Christians or theists are this way, I'm just saying thatis the way the majority has been represented to the general public. Which isn't my fault if it's an incorrect representation; only YOU guyscan change this.) So in trying to cool down your ego, it is important not to let trying not to have an ego interfere with finding the truth either. Don't become so anti-ego that you refuse to accept anything that seems slightly egotistical that comes your way. Because although too much ego is blinding, ego is still a big part of our reality, and there are truths about reality that you will never understand if you don't consider it without being biased towards it.

Other Ways Controlling Your Ego will Help You

Actually paying attention to yourself is the biggest part of it. In the search for Truth, you have to understand yourself before you can start to understand what's around you. Once you start paying attention to yourself, start to figure out where all your emotions, desires,and opinions are coming from. First you have to decide to be completely honest with yourself. That is basically what controlling Ego isall about. Often Ego will lie to you. Ego is the part of people that warps reality. I'm sure at some point you may have been associated with two people who had an argument over something (maybe 2 friends, maybe some family members). And when one person talked to you about it, you could see why they were upset over it. But then theother person talked to you, and it sounded like almost an entirely different story, because the way they had viewed it was so different.Of course, they weren't actually telling two different stories. They were telling one story, with two different egos. Their egos had lied to them about it. If you have control over your Ego, you aren't neccessarily going to be happy with everyone all the time. The only way it would bring complete peace was if everyone in the world did this. And that's being stupidly optimistic. So there are still people who will have egos besides you. And sometimes you might actually see the Truth about something, and try to tell someone, but they won't listento you because they are wrapped up in their Ego. So controlling your Ego is NOT going to keep you from having disagreements (this isn't some magic potion that will give you eternal peace, I'm sorry to say.) BUT it will definitely reduce the number of disagreements you do have. It will also help you in endless other ways, in ways that you would not have guessed it would. Again, controlling your Ego isn't neccessarily not having one. You are still going to draw opinions sometimes, but the thing is not to letthese opinions bother other people (not to extremes I mean, like getting into pointless, endless arguments; Doesn't mean that you should constantly worry about bothering people, or let people walk all over you). However, there are still ways to downsize your Ego, even though you can't and really shouldn't get rid of it completely..

How to Directly Control Your Ego

I've been going off topic from how to keep your Ego from getting in the way of Truth, because I wanted to give you a good understanding of it first. So here is the way to downsize your Ego so that it doesn't interfere with the Truth:1) Pay attention to your emotions, desires, and opinions, especially when you start telling them to other people. Just start thinking aboutthem, try to think of why you have them, where you got your information or your personal idea of it. If it's information, consider that it couldbe wrong. If it's personal ideas, consider how other people, especially the people against your ideas, might feel.2) Remember that whenever you decide something, it becomes fact in your mind, so you will always try to prove it as fact from thenon, and it will be harder later on for you to deprogram yourself from thinking that its true if it turns out that it's not. Often, you build ideason top of ideas, so if you decide too soon what your belief will be, if it turns out it was incorrect, all the ideas that are connected will collapse, which will make it even harder. Nothings wrong with not knowing or having an opinion on something. A lot of the times peoplewill let their ego drive them into deciding something before they understand everything about what they are deciding.3) I promise, you will know the Truth if you do this. And when you know the Truth, it will set you free from any doubts. It won't come to you the same way that an ego-inspired decision would. It will come to you fully as the Truth, as something you just know the same way youjust know that you've been breathing for all of your life. So you don't have to worry or push it.4) It takes practice, and you'll get better at it as you work on it. Perfection isn't the goal right now, progress is. You don't have to completely get rid of your sense of individuality, it's more about achieving understanding and denying ignorance. I'm definitely not perfect and don't follow this perfectly, but I try my best.

Conclusion

This is THE first and most important way to start understanding Truth, and all the other tips for understanding after this are just continuing this step. So if you only pay attention to one thing I tell you, this would be it. Pay attention to when it's your ego talking to you,and you will be much more likely to find the truth rather than blindly follow your ego.